Re: Last Call: draft-dusseault-http-patch (PATCH Method for HTTP) to Proposed Standard

[Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@xxxxxx>]

Subbu Allamaraju wrote:
> The example in 2.1 uses an ETag on the PATCH response. Given that the 
> entity tag corresponds to the response, what does this mean?
> ...

RFC2616 never said clearly.

HTTPbis currently says in 
<http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/draft-ietf-httpbis-p2-semantics-08.html#rfc.section.6.1>:

"5. Otherwise, the response is a representation of an anonymous (i.e., 
unidentified) resource."

Thus, an ETag on a PATCH response is useless, unless if it comes with a 
Content-Location header:

"3. If the response has a Content-Location header, and that URI is the 
same as the request-URI [rfc.comment.1: (see [ref])], the response is a 
representation of the resource at the request-URI."

The simplest possible fix appears to leave out the ETag, and delegate 
this issue to HTTPbis.

Best regards, Julian